Salvation, knowledge and faith : a Christian theological enquiry based on the soteriology of Emil Brunner

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Abstract

This study examines the nature of, the relationship
between
salvation,
knowledge and
faith in the specific context of
Christian theology. It
seeks to establish an epistemological
basis for the Christian message of salvation
in
a culture which
since
the time of the Enlightenment has been highly sceptical
of religious
claims.
This study
begins
with a critique of the theology of
Emil Brunner. It accepts two of his theological premises; that
human reason and philosophy cannot prove the truth of salvation,
and
that the
salvation of which
Christianity speaks does
not
address
humanity like
a
bolt from the blue
as some groundless
revelation
but
on the basis of a point of contact
between
man
and God, which allows
humanity to recognise
the salvific event.
The distinction Brunner draws between 'personal' knowledge
as
an encounter between
subjects, and
'objective' knowledge
which
is the
construct of
human
reason enables
him to
speak
of revelation
in
an unusual and original way. According to this thesis Christian
revelation
is
at the same
time rationally and
'personally'
comprehensible, and yet not capable of being deduced or
verified
by human reason.
However closer
investigation
reveals that Brunner's
exposition of the incarnation as the 'personal'
self-revelation
of God within
history is
not coherent
in itself. His
understanding of
both the 'personal' and the 'historical' is
not so much
derived from
a natural understanding of personality
and history, but rather
from
a use of those terms as
defined by,
an understanding of revelation which contains
implicit
within
it
the
groundlessness and
the 'alien' nature of revelation which,
he
sought to avoid.
It is the contention of this thesis that in
spite of Brunner's
failure it is
possible
to use
his basic
categories of the
'historical'
and the 'personal' to speak of salvation as the,
confirmation within
history of human 'personal' worth. This
worth is
ultimately
indescribable
and
inexplicable in the
categories of a contingent and
finite
world, and, as such,
is
open to a transcendent confirmation and validation. The Christian
tradition, itself
rooted
in the tradition of Judaism,
bears
witness, like Judaism, to the experience of such a 'personal'
validation and vindication.
In this sense, therefore, the
resurrection of Jesus, while offering no
historical 'proof
of the
truth'
on account of
its
essentially
'personal'
nature, can
be
seen as a
legitimate epistemological
basis for
an understanding
of salvation, which still preserves the primacy of
faith. However
the focus
upon the category of salvation, and salvation as an
epistemological touchstone, reveals that the resurrection of Jesus
confirms not so much
the traditional distinctive Christological
ontology, but
rather a more all-embracing ontology of the gracious
transcendence of
love itself
which resists the narrow and
distinctive definitions of orthodoxy. In fact
an epistemologically
valid
ontology of
faith's
activity
in love
allows the
traditional
ontologies
of Christology, Soteriology and the Trinity to be
seen
as peripheral
to a contemporary articulation of the Christian
message
of salvation on account of their dubious
epistemological
foundations.

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